Country where everyone loves receiving injections

Cambodians have an obscure obsession with needles, everyone loves receiving injections

Pulse | 21 December 2015

 

Cambodia is located in South East Asia and is renowned all over the world for its rich cultural heritage and history with amazing grandeur like Angkor, Khmer Rouge and off course Vietnam War and landmines. But the locals have an obscure obsession with needles and here people love to receive injections.

While most people living in other parts of the world would prefer to avoid injections, here the citizens are fascinated by the use and idea of needles and intravenous drips. It is not clear how this has originated, may be is has been integrated in the Nation’s psyche, however people here resort to injection and intravenous drips even when they are not prescribed and does not require at all.

A doctor told BBC that it’s not just one village or one person, everybody wants to go to the hospital to receive shots. BBC journalist John Murphy who had covered the phenomenon in detail said, “I regularly saw people on IV drips and not just IV drips but also on motorbikes. These were mobile IV drips”.

Curious about this bizarre incident Murphy once stopped a motorbike with three people on it and he saw the passenger at the back was holding up a stick and the end of which had a plastic bag and a bottle of IV fluid. The passenger was diagnosed with malaria and had liver disease and intestinal problems. According to him the drip seemed to have a ‘cooling effect’ on his body and gives him energy.

The man told Murphy, “There are a lot of people who have IV drips on motorbikes. I am poor, I’m not rich. I don’t have a car to drive around, so I have a drip on a motorbike.” According to a local doctor, “Everybody who goes to hospital gets an IV because they think it’s important and the doctors and nurses think it’s important. If you walk in a hospital, pretty close, every patient will have an IV.”